Scripture: Luke 17: 11-19, Psalm 66
Over the four years I have been here, I have occasionally preached sermons about a pilgrimage I am making to Santiago de Compostella in Spain. It’s a walking pilgrimage that takes a couple of months. I have done a few week long installments so far.
I have told the story of how I first felt the call to pilgrimage while walking the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral. I have told the story of how my pride pushed me to ruin my feet with blisters. I have told the story of no room at the inn, the day I walked 26 miles and ended up sleeping on the floor of a private chapel. This morning, I am going to tell you the story of the day I feel on my knees in gratitude to God, and how that saved me.
As I just mentioned, there was a day several years ago when my pride got the better of me and I severely injured my feet with blisters trying to keep up with another hiker. While the blisters and pain were bad enough, my real problem was distance. I had chosen to be a damned fool about halfway through my week’s hike. My feet were killing me and I still had at least 60 miles to go to the next town where I could catch a bus out. Those 60 miles were up and over a pretty empty, windswept expanse of 3-4,000 high mountains populated mostly by cattle and sheep called the Aubrac.
This story is about the day after I hurt my feet, the day I set off across the Aubrac.
Being an essentially confident and hopeful person with what I like to tell myself is a reasonably dependable reservoir of physical and mental toughness, I put on blister cream, thicker bandages, another layer of socks, relaced my boots in the hopes of increasing snugness and reducing slippage, shouldered my pack, donned my floppy sunhat, picked up walking staff and set off before 7 AM in two frames of mind. In one frame, I was a bold conqueror. In the other, I was tentatively making my way across thin ice, wondering how long my feet were going to hold.
Any of you who are or have been hikers know that walking level ground is a piece of cake. It is the ups and downs, as well as the loose rocks, tree roots and other thing to stumble over if you’re not paying attention or if they cannot be avoided – these are the challenges of hiking. No offense, but just to make sure you are following me, this is a true story, but it also a metaphor for life, particularly the spiritual aspects of life. So, allow me to repeat myself: Any of you who are or have been hikers know that walking level ground is a piece of cake. It is the ups and downs, as well as the loose rocks, tree roots and other thing to stumble over if you’re not paying attention or if they cannot be avoided – these are the challenges of hiking.
As I just described it, the Aubrac is a wild, mountainous place with very little level ground. I am not saying that it was all uphill, but when it wasn’t uphill it was all downhill and going down can be just as jarring as going up can be taxing. On top of the ups and downs, the path seemed very uneven, with stretches where one foot was higher than the other, potholes, step ups and downs, and loose stone and gravel which just rolled out from under your feet the moment you put any weight down. Remember, a true story but also a metaphor for life.
As you can imagine, all of this heavy going was playing havoc with my blisters. Even with my precautions, I could feel them abrading, opening and spreading both topically and in depth. From this point on, the experience had two main characteristics. First, there were constant jarring stabs of intense, localized pain from particular missteps – the kind of pain that takes your breath away, contracts the muscles of your face, neck and shoulders, and even brings tears to your eyes. True story and metaphor for life. Second, there was the dull, over all ache of chronic pain that built as the jolts of pain coalesced into an ever present threshold of experience which, for lack of a better word, was thoroughly unpleasant. Chronic pain exhausts. Chronic pain can dull the senses of sight and sound into a uniform grayness. Chronic pain can dampen emotions like hope, happiness and satisfaction until you are left hesitant, persevering and suffering. The journey of chronic pain can be one of tolerance and endurance rather than embrace and delight. A true story but also a metaphor for life.
So, there I was, hobbling along through an empty French countryside, (actually it was beautiful, I know because I have seen the pictures I took, but my pain refracted it through a prism of emptiness) each step fearful…when it started to rain. I walked on, uphill now, up an old cart track which consisted of two ruts. I was panting with the pain when I rounded a corner and came upon a stack of hay bails under a tarp. I felt like I couldn’t go another step, that I had to sit down and put my feet up, which is what I did, making a little shelter under the tarp with my walking staff and backpack. I loosened my boots and my feet exploded their previous constrained agony. Feeling quite alone in my misery, I took off my boots and elevated my feet to slow the pulsing throbs. Sitting there in my hay bail recliner, eating sausage, baguette and apples, no wine I’m sorry to say, just water, my feet gradually loosened their shackles on my attention and I dared to lift my gaze down the path, across the fields to the horizon.
Not to sound overly clichéd, but lo and behold, there was a little stone building in the distance. It looked as if the track went right up to it. Could it be medieval, a miniature Romanesque church? I slipped on sandals and staggered the 200 or so yards up the path to what turned out to be a 500 year old pilgrim's chapel. Would it be open? I tried the latch. It lifted. The door opened. Whoever was the caretaker had installed a motion detector light switch. Inside there were benches with kneelers for perhaps 10, facing a row of candles, behind which hung Jesus on the Cross with Mary in blue at his right hand, both looking directly at me.
I took off my pack and raincoat and stood them in the corner with my staff. I took out a breviary I had with me, a book of prayers for the hours of the day, opened it to Thursday afternoon, lit one of the candles, knelt down before Jesus and Mary and looked at the open page.
The first reading was Psalm 84:4: “Happy are the people whose strength is in you! Whose hearts are set on the pilgrim way.” If that wasn’t enough, the second reading was from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: “Always be joyful; pray continually; give thanks whatever happens; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
When in France, speak French I always say. Apropos, don’t you think? Those two verses reached right into my heart and down to the souls of my feet and began to heal me. Were my feet suddenly blister free? No. But my heart was lightening and my mind was clearing by the moment. I stayed right there on my knees and did as the verses taught: I thought of joy, gave thanks to Mary for Jesus, gave thanks to both Mary and Jesus for being in my way that day and for my being on that way that day. My heart just swelled with gratitude for the pilgrimage that had brought me to that place at that time and I began to feel strength seep back into my legs.
Eventually I realized that I been lost in prayer for a while, gazing at the candles and feeling what I was feeling and being flooded with thanks for feeling what I was feeling and thinking what I was thinking – I snapped out of it and checked my watch: Time to go.
I opened my Bible to Luke 1 and read Mary’s Song, The Magnificat, to Mary and prayed the Lord’s Prayer to you know who, slipped my feet back into my boots, laced up, stood up, yup they still hurt: “Always be joyful; pray continually; give thanks whatever happens; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Backpacked up, staffed up, took one last look and bowed to the altar: “Happy are the people whose strength is in you! Whose hearts are set on the pilgrim way.” and went out. The rain had stopped.
Same path. Same fields. Same distance to the next bed. Same backpack load. Same feet. But a different me, because my faith was making me well, was saving me, I was getting up and going as Jesus advised the healed leper. The Greek verb “to get up” in our lesson is the same one for “to resurrect” and the earliest audience would have made that immediate connection. Language aside, we don’t make that connection because we think we’re in this on our own, like me before I knelt before the altar of that chapel and was flooded with gratitude for having had my eyes opened. Sure, I hobbled for the rest of the day and it hurt, but I walked from my strength in the Lord, my joy in the pilgrim way. I prayed with every step I took and my path became one of adventure and pilgrimage rather than the dull endurance contest it had been. I even gave thanks at a roadside café when a woman with dirt on her face and hands charged me $4 for a bottle of coke and I drank it with a rooster standing on my table pecking at my chips and a mangy dog half covered in manure begged at my feet. When we fall into our faith, we get up because Jesus got up. The Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, once wrote:
Sorrow happens, hardship happens,
The hell with it, who never knew
The price of happiness, will not be happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment